Rethinking natural resources, energy and rural environments

In this chapter, we discuss environment, energy and rural society. We view nature and society as mutually constituted and demonstrate the power of a coupled society-nature lens for viewing the interrelationships between rural society and the natural world. We argue that dominant constructions of rural sustainability are founded on an implicit acceptance of an equivalence of the rural with the natural, and of the environmental with the sustainable. This chapter raises questions about how rural sustainability has come to be constructed in this way, whose interests are served, and how discursive power is exercised to favour these interests. We also raise policy and practice-related questions of how rural communities can become more sustainable and how to promote and support these efforts towards a just transition. Is there scope for greater rural agency and indeed for rural modernization as alternative pathways to greater wellbeing, now and in the future?